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Korean drama Never Forget Your Enemy follows 29-year-old Ki Ha Neul (Hwang Jun Su), who wakes up after an accident with no recollection of the past ten years. He doesn’t remember dating his best friend, Sae Byeok (Lee Ja Woon), for the last few years. His last memory is from when he was 19, wanting to cut ties with Sae Byeok because he keeps stealing Ha Neul’s girlfriends!
In Ha Neul’s mind, Sae Byeok is his rival/enemy, but what he doesn’t know is that his childhood friend was always in love with him. Between high school flashbacks and a present where he suffers from amnesia, Ha Neul struggles to come to terms with his romantic relationship with his childhood frenemy Sae Byeok, now a successful actor.
The plot basically sounds like a mash-up of the Japanese romance Jack O’Frost and the Taiwanese drama Secret Lover. While the former is a heartwarming show about an artist who forgets his lover and the two finding their way back to each other, ‘Secret Lover’ revolves around a man secretly in love with his best friend, who keeps dating girls interested in his BFF as a way of keeping his crush single. But going by the first two episodes of ‘Never Forget Your Enemy’, it’s hard to determine if the chemistry between the leads is going to be as memorable as the shows it sounds like.
Actor Hwang Jun Su who plays protagonist Ki Ha Neul, isn’t very expressive in the emotional scenes and comes across as awkwardly holding back in moments that demand more expressions from him. Lee Ja Woon on the other hand is more convincing as the dashing Sae Byeok, the ever-patient boyfriend dealing with being forgotten (rough luck, honestly).
Given the amnesia trope, ‘Never Forget Your Enemy’ could’ve easily unfolded like a romantic comedy, but the creators fail to maximize the comic potential of situation. There are a few funny bits, especially when Ha Neul practically drives poor Sae Byeok out of his hospital room, but they never quite reach laugh-out-loud territory.
For now, the onscreen chemistry between the two leads is more on the awkward side, hopefully it gets better in the later episodes. Actors Park Bo Gum and Lee Sang Yi managed to have more bromance chemistry in action-comedy ‘Good Boy’, where their characters were actually rivals in love with the same girl.
Overall, the first two episodes of ‘Never Forget Your Enemy’ feel like a lazy rehash of shows that already exist, and my expectations aren’t very high.
‘Never Forget Your Enemy’ is streaming on We TV.
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